


This Space Without You

by andachippedcup



Series: andachippedcup's Olicity Summer Sizzle Fics [9]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, Passengers AU, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andachippedcup/pseuds/andachippedcup
Summary: Oliver Queen sets out aboard the Gambit, a next generation interstellar ship bound for Planet 2040: a new planet ready for colonization. The voyage will take 120 years, during which time the passengers and crew will be under hibernation - frozen as they await arrival at their new home. Something goes wrong though and Oliver awakens ninety years too soon and finds himself alone on the ship, with no hope of rescue. To occupy his days, he 'meets' a new passenger each day, reading their profiles and imagining what they must be like. But then one day, he encounters 'Felicity Smoak' and for some reason, he just can't seem to tear himself away...[Olicity Summer Sizzle - 'Pining' Prompt]





	This Space Without You

It was the stillness that had struck him most, looking back on it all. The profound emptiness that met his ears and eyes when he had finally stumbled out of his sleeping pod, his breathing hitching unevenly as his body struggled to come alive after so many years of hibernation. Still, he’d been too stupefied at the time to do more than fumble his way into his quarters and fall into bed, his stomach churning and body trembling with the sudden resumed action of muscles and organs left so long unused.

But later, when he’d awoken and felt more himself, he’d sensed it. The permeating vastness that signified not just the greatness of the ship upon which he found himself, but the void where there should have been an undertone of activity.

The halls had been empty when he’d departed his luxury suite, but he attributed that to the fact that, as the son of the ship’s owner, his quarters were vast and any so called ‘neighbors’ were rather far flung from his door. Of course he wouldn’t run into them as he left his room. But as he’d wandered the halls and found the grand concourse and the mess hall similarly empty, an unpleasant, nagging fear had begun to take hold in his brain. He eventually made his way back to the hibernation bay, where the thousands of passenger pods were stored and it was there that his concern blossomed to full blown terror. For where there should have been five thousand empty pods, there were instead thousands of full hibernation pods, his fellow passengers still slumbering undisturbed while he roamed the halls of the Gambit ship, seemingly alone.

The crew’s pods were similarly occupied, though the crew was supposed to awaken a full month before the passengers. As he raced through the halls, heart pounding, he found himself screaming, desperately seeking anyone awake aboard the ship of dreams that had suddenly become a ship of nightmares.

It wasn’t until he spoke with the various forms of artificial intelligence on the ship that the true bleakness of his plight became clear to him. Every help center, observation deck, bartender, and waiter AI that he spoke to provided a similar response.

Of the one hundred and twenty years that it took to voyage to Planet 2040, a mere thirty had passed thus far.

Oliver Queen had awoken ninety years too soon.

☆☆☆☆☆

Oliver had gone through the five stages of grief presumably no less than a dozen times. He’d spent more money than was reasonable to send word to Earth of his plight, only to be informed that his message would take 19 years to reach Earth, and a response would take an additional 36 years to reach the ship. That fun fact had prompted him to spend the following two months so thoroughly intoxicated that he’d hardly left the back of the bar, much to the AI barkeeper’s robotic dismay.

Despite an impressive lack of useful life skills, he’d tried to figure out some way of putting himself back under hibernation. In a move truly opposite of classic Oliver Queen fashion, he’d read everything in the ship’s library that might have shed some light on the matter, only to be informed that the hibernation process was proprietary information and he was therefore, so fucking out of luck. Not even by using his ID bracelet to confirm his identity as one Oliver Queen, son of the man who owned the rights to said proprietary information, could he access it. His father had apparently not entrusted him with that very important trade secret.

And just like that, he’d wasted a year trying to get himself back to sleep, only to have life continue to kick him while he was down. 

Nice.

He’d spent the better part of another year trying to enjoy himself. He ate lavishly, drank in excess (though neither of those was anything new for the Queen heir), and he made use of every luxury the ship had to offer. He swam, he danced, he made use of every recreational device in the gym, got massages from the robotic masseuse, watched movies, read books for pleasure. He made his own games out of making the robotic cleaning system follow him around like animatronic dogs.

Year three was a time of deep depression, where he toyed with the idea of suicide more often than he would later care to recount. The only thing that kept him tethered to some shred of sanity or hope (or perhaps delusion) was the knowledge that his family would find out what he’d done when they awakened from their slumber, and the idea of their shame always kept him from walking out of the airlock without a suit on. 

He could handle a great deal of pain - this much he had learned - but the notion of his sister’s pain upon learning he’d taken his own life? Even the abstract notion of it was enough to make him shudder. 

In his fourth year of utter solitude upon the Gambit, Oliver Queen began to do something he’d never done during his years on Earth. He took notice of the people around him. Not just his family – though he frequently sat outside their hibernation pods, speaking to them as if they were there, writing them letters that would remain untouched for over three quarters of a century. But the regular people that surrounded him, even if they weren’t quite awake. 

Each pod bore a few sparse details of each person within, and Oliver began to make a game out of acquainting himself with each of them. After all, there were 4,999 other passengers aboard this vessel. If he spent one day on each person, he’d buy himself over a decade of entertainment and companionship. And companionship was in rather short supply. 

The people aboard the ship came from many walks of life. All different socioeconomic backgrounds, different upbringings. Four thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine different stories just waiting to be told. There were freshly graduated students looking to build a new world, former soldiers looking to work as security guards on Planet 2040, biologists, computer specialists, doctors, bankers, and many more. Oliver spent time with them, reading all the information the pod had to offer, filling in the blanks on what it lacked, and using the ship’s directory to learn what he could. 

He made up their shared histories – whether they would have been friends or foes on Planet 2040, whether they could have bumped into each other on the street on Earth. And when the person who he was learning about that day was a woman, he often pondered other, less innocent things about their interactions.

Solitude was difficult in more ways than one, after all. 

But never, in the four years, two months, and fourteen days since he’d awoken, alone on the Gambit, had solitude seemed more distressing and unbearable than the day he sat down in front of _ her _pod to spend the day getting to know her. 

“Felicity Smoak?” 

He’d smiled and chuckled a little as he’d read her name off of the pod’s small screen, his eyes roving up to the clear glass that entombed her. What kind of name was ‘Smoak’ anyhow? She was peaceful as she hibernated, but then again they all were peaceful in their various states of repose. He’d yet to see a single passenger that didn’t look relaxed and calm but still. Something about her struck him as_ particularly _at peace. The gentle slope of her lips, as if she were just on the verge of smiling when she’d been put under hibernation. The roundness of her cheeks made him wonder what her face looked like when she smiled. Her hair fell around her in blonde tendrils with a faint natural curl and then there were her eyes. Or rather, her eyelids, curtaining the eyes behind them, weighed down by thick eyelashes that cruelly hid from his view the color of the eyes beneath them.

God he wanted to know what color her eyes were. 

He laid a hand across the glass case of her pod as he leaned down to look at her, something in him stirring uneasily even as he did so. 

“Felicity Smoak,” he said again, this time a little hoarsely, no sign of laughter in his voice as he continued to read her placard. “IT Specialist.” He shook his head and took a step away from her reluctantly. “I bet you’d be able to figure out what went haywire with my hibernation pod.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he paced in front of her. “Bet you could even fix it. Maybe get me back to sleep,” he commented, only to draw himself up suddenly as he realized what he’d said. Was he really implying that if he woke her up, she’d be able to fix his problems? What kind of asshole move would that be, to awaken her ninety years too soon on a gamble?!

“Oh no. No no no no. _ Fuck me_!” He swore aloud, kicking his chair away from her pod angrily as he now paced in front of it like a storm cloud. “No. That is not an option. It’s not. We’re not even going to take it off the table because it’s never going on the table. What the _ hell_!” He bellowed at himself, loathing himself for thinking, even for a moment, even as an abstract concept, that he could try to wake her up in the vain hope that she might be able to save him.

“What if you do that, that genuinely selfish, totally _ assholeish _move, and she can’t do it? What if you wake her up and she can’t get either of us back to sleep, huh? Then you’ve doomed her along with you. Fucking hell NO!” He yelled again, slamming his fists down on the glass of her pod, which reverberated with a low hum. 

“No,” he huffed adamantly, “not happening.” 

And in that abrupt fashion, so ended his first meeting with Felicity Smoak. 

☆☆☆☆☆

“You know, I’m not supposed to be here again. You were yesterday. Today… today was supposed to be that guy,” he pointed emphatically to the pod next to hers, where a young man was hibernating. “Ray Palmer. Owner of Palmer Technologies. And instead, _ instead _ I am here again. With you. _ Felicity Smoak_. IT Specialist,” he loused as he sat down backwards on his chair, his arms folded over the top of the backrest lazily. “_Again_.” 

Silence stretched between them as he continued to stare at her, pondering what her voice must sound like. Did she have an accent? What would her laugh sound like to his ears? And her hands – were they soft and smooth, or were they calloused?

“Smooth, I bet,” he said aloud, staring at her hard. “Computer whiz… your hands probably don’t see a lot of manual labor that would leave you with calluses.” 

Sighing, he spun his chair around so that it was facing the correct way and he hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees as he scrolled through the passenger manifest on his tablet. He pulled her passenger profile up, sucking in a breath as an image of her appeared on his screen. 

_ Damn_.

She had a beautiful smile and in the picture, she was sporting bright lipstick. Intelligent blue eyes peered back at him from behind a set of dark glasses and a pink collared blouse gave her skin a warm glow. There was a softness to her face that belied youth, a realization which sent him scrambling to find her age. 

“Twenty eight,” he breathed, cocking his head to the side as he thought for a moment. “I was twenty seven when we boarded. But it’s been four years so… I’m thirty one.” He paused, looking back down on her. “What are your thoughts on age differences?”

Shaking his head at the silence that ensued, he continued reading her profile, despite having told himself yesterday that he wouldn’t dwell on her anymore. 

“You worked at Queen Consolidated? Fuck,” he exhaled, taken aback by how close he might have been to her – hell, he might have even _ seen her _ on Earth, yet it had taken this cruel twist of fate for him to learn of her. “Born in Las Vegas. Ranked 2nd in the National Information Technology competition. Graduated from MIT with a master’s in Cyber Security and Computer Sciences. Okay, now you’re just showing off,” he commented, looking up from the tablet to arch an eyebrow at her playfully. 

“Middle name: Megan. Huh. Felicity Megan Smoak. Has a nice ring to it." 

Continuing to peruse her file, he paused as he came to the video entries that every passenger was asked to record prior to being put in hibernation. For some reason, the notion of seeing her as she actually was, not just as he imagined her, had him sweating. With a shaking hand, he clicked on the video file.

“Why am I going on the Gambit? Mmm. Can I pass on that question?” She laughed, running a hand through her hair as she worried at her lip, buying herself a moment to think. “I know that that should be an easy question for me to answer. But… it doesn’t _ feel _like an easy question. I don’t know I guess I… I want a purpose? And here on Earth, everything’s so messed up and bleak. I just feel… I don’t know I guess a little lost? I just… I want to find my purpose. I want to do something to change the world. And now, going on the Gambit… It means I have a chance to make the place I’m going to live – Planet 2040 – safe. I can make a place better. Help build something. I guess that’s really cheesy. I’m just reciting Queen Consolidated slogans now, aren’t I?” She laughed again, shaking her head as she folded her hands in her lap, lips pursed as she thought for a moment. 

“I want to do something good for the world. I guess that’s what it comes down to. And a space adventure? That’s kind of awesome,” she added with a genuine smile, her eyes flashing brightly. 

He smashed the pause button with his index finger before pinching the bridge of his nose tightly as he fought to clear his head. Of course he was drawn to her. She was beautiful and young and in the videos, she was a vivacious, almost tangible thing. But that didn’t make her any more real to him. She was behind that glass, as asleep and dead to him as the other thousands of passengers and nothing would change that. Why was he tormenting himself with her when it was all for naught? Even if he lived to a ripe old age, there was no way he would live long enough to ever speak to her, ever shake her hand, or make her laugh. 

He was a visitor at a museum of figures tucked safely behind the glass. They were all here to be looked at but not touched, and never would they speak back to him, never would they touch him, or in any way interact with him. Even if he lived long enough to hear a response from Earth, he’d be an old man. Any dreams of starting his life over, away from his drunken, playboy, billionaire heir history would be long dead. So much for his fresh start.

And yet he kept coming back to her. He was drawn to her. He couldn’t say precisely why; it was more than just her looks. There were plenty of beautiful women aboard the ship. He’d already reviewed the profiles of plenty of them. But none had affected him the way that she had. Somehow, without even being conscious, Felicity Smoak had gotten under his skin and now? Now it seemed there was no getting her out.

“I need a drink,” he growled as he rose to his feet, tossing the tablet on his chair behind him as he began to walk away, hesitating for a heartbeat before turning back to look at her. “Goodbye, Felicity.” 

☆☆☆☆☆

“What’s up Yao?” Oliver slurred as he came staggering into the VIP lounge some months later, greeted the same as ever by the animatronic man known as 'Yao Fei' that stood behind the bar, perpetually shining a glass or moving bottles on the well stocked shelves. 

“Welcome back, Mister Queen. You’ve already been indulging today, I see.” 

“I have!” Oliver crowed in drunken joy as he attempted to seat himself at the bar, not succeeding in the slightest as he instead, crashed to the floor limply, pulling himself up with a chuckle. It was not until his third attempt that he managed to find his seat successfully. “On days when I feel really fucking sick of this place, I drink. And on days when I can’t get Felicity out of my head, I drink.”

“And today are you sick of ‘this place’, or can you not get this ‘Felicity’ out of your head?” Yao questioned and Oliver nodded with an open mouthed grin.

“Yes!” He crowed, nodding emphatically. “Both. Both is my answer.” 

“Maybe instead of dwelling on the place you are that you do not wish to be, you should focus on how to improve your situation. And instead of thinking of Felicity, think of other things.” 

“Been there. Tried that. Didn’t work,” Oliver answered, reaching over the bar for a bottle of vodka which he quickly popped open and took a deep drink from. “I dream about her. I think of her every day no matter what I do. I’ve spent three months trying to focus on someone, anyone else. No dice. I keep coming back to her pod. Every day,” he explained, shaking his head as, unbidden, the vision of her sleeping in her pod came to his mind. “And as for the other thing… What’d you say? ‘Focus on improving my situation’? Well...I’m not a doctor. Or a computer geek. I have virtually no skills which would be of any use to get me back to sleep,” he remarked, the alcohol turning his frustration, anger, and sorrow into indifference, at least for now. “So I’m drinking instead.” 

“Perhaps instead of trying to go back, you should try to go forward.” Yao answered, taking a rag and mopping up the droplets of vodka that Oliver had spilled in the process of opening the bottle. This gave him pause and he froze, staring hard at the robotic man before him, every hair on his body standing on end. 

“Say that again.” 

“Perhaps instead of trying to go back, you should try to go forward.”

“One more time-”

“Perhaps instead of trying to go back-.”

“-Go forward.” Oliver finished, an idea forming even in his drunken stupor. Leaning forward, he grabbed the robotic bartender by the head and kissed him sloppily before falling backwards and hurrying out of the bar. 

☆☆☆☆☆

For the next six months, he threw himself into his study of the hibernation pods, reviewing the material he had looked at years ago, when the hope of returning to hibernation had still seemed like an actual possibility. But this time, instead of seeking a way to re-enter hibernation, he focused his energies on finding a method by which to simply cease his body’s metabolic functions.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it might buy him the time that he needed until someone better informed and capable was able to help him. 

He pored over the manuals stored in the med bay and the library, he exhausted all the ship’s database information on the subject. He spent hours at the bar, quizzing Yao for any bit of information the AI system retained on the subject. 

He was not a man of science. But Oliver Queen had spent nearly five years in hell, a castaway on a ship that was, for his intents and purposes, an island of solitude. And his perseverance and determination had to count for something. Never in his life had he applied himself to anything as he had his initial studies of the pod and the hibernation process. He’d become intimately acquainted with his own pod, trying to understand how it could have failed, what the cause could have been, how it could be reversed. 

He understood now the basic mechanics of the hibernation pods - or at least, he thought he did. So if he could, through his studies, find a course of action that would allow him to rig a poor man’s hibernation workaround...

And therein lay his uncertainty. 

Even if he did figure something out, he had no guarantees. Hibernation had been well studied (and was supposedly infallible) but metabolic cessation? Well… that was basically like the wild west of hibernation alternatives.

And still, the temptation loomed. Perhaps he couldn’t put himself _ under _ hibernation, but if he could at least take someone else _ out _of it, maybe that would improve matters. If, of course, the other person was in the know on how to get them both back to sleep later.

If he could, he would have awoken the crew, amongst whom there was bound to be a doctor of the skills necessary to put him back under. Or so he had hoped. But access to the crew pods was denied to passengers – even passengers whose fathers owned the ship - and try though he had to bust his way in, he’d been unsuccessful in the four and three quarter years he’d spent trying. So his options were to accept his fate of solitude and live out his life (or not live it out, if he so chose), or to act. There were four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine other passengers aboard this vessel and if he woke the right one, they could help him break into the crew deck, and from there, wake up the crew members with the knowledge necessary to put them back to sleep again. 

But if the person he woke could not help him get access, then he would be as good as stranding them on this hellish island ship with him. 

“Yao, if you’re stranded alone on a hellish island, and you have the ability to bring someone with you to relieve your suffering, what are the ethics behind bringing someone with you if it means you’re stranding them too?”

“I’m sorry, I do not have an answer for that question.” 

“Of course you don’t,” Oliver sighed, hanging his head as he sat at the bar, swiveling in his chair morosely. 

“I can wake her up, Yao. Felicity.” 

“This must please you.” 

“Yes. No! _ Fuck_. I don’t know.” Oliver swore, staring into the clear contents of his glass uncertainly. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” 

“You always have me.” 

‘Yeah. Thanks Yao,” Oliver sighed again, tossing back the remainder of his drink before he stood to go, running a hand through his overgrown hair. 

“You should shave. Before you wake her. There is a barber on the grand concourse, level three.” Yao suggested and Oliver rolled his eyes.

“I’ll take that under advisement.” 

“Say hello to Felicity!” Yao said in parting and Oliver stopped for a moment as he watched the bartender seem to glitch, freezing in the midst of cleaning Oliver’s empty glass and then jerkily moving from side to side, no more than an inch in either direction. He remained in this state for all of a few seconds – fifteen or twenty at most – before he resumed his normal, fluid motion, leaving Oliver to wonder what had prompted Yao’s malfunction. Perhaps asking a question so beyond the robotic AI’s intended abilities had made Yao’s system fritz.

“Not gonna happen Yao. I'm not waking her up,” he answered the AI's cheery remark in a low whisper before departing the bar, letting his mind and feet wander freely and without purpose, the incident with Yao's glitch giving way to other, weightier subjects in Oliver’s mind. 

He found himself at her pod, as he always did these days. And once more he found himself looking at her, hating himself for even considering waking her. She was beautiful and young and she had her entire life ahead of her. A life where she had wanted purpose. What could he offer her except damnation to a ship that would carry them to a destination they would never see? He offered nothing but a prolonged wait for death. 

Sitting in the chair he now kept perpetually at her podside, he grabbed up his tablet and saw her profile already on the screen waiting for him. And once more he played the video files of her that the passenger manifest kept recorded. 

“Some things about me? Okay well let’s see. I’m Jewish. I am afraid of pointy things. And kangaroos - they definitely creep me out. Umm. When I was little I really wanted to go to space camp. The little kid in me is way pumped for this trip, albeit a little sad that I’m only going to be awake for the last few months of it,” she smiled and paused to laugh, touching her glasses as she did so – it seemed to be a tic of hers, based on what he’d seen in her videos. “I prefer red pens. You write with a red pen, people are going to notice. Blue or black? Too standard. Boring!” Another chuckle. “I sound ridiculous. But when I get nervous I babble and it’s really hard to stop because I just keep going and right now I’m talking to a camera and it’s going to be a hundred and twenty years or more before anyone watches this but I’m still going to be alive. And that’s a little mind boggling and so I’m babbling. Which will end! In 3…2…1.” 

She took a deep breath, steadying herself, and looked to the camera with renewed confidence. “I am just a girl looking to make a difference in the universe. And I just so happen to be kind of a little bit of a genius. So here’s hoping,” she shrugged and the screen went dark as the video ended, leaving Oliver breathless. 

He skipped back in the video to the precise time stamp he had come to memorize, the time stamp that had been burned into his brain and left him awake at night, staring at the ceiling. Once more, Felicity Smoak’s face appeared on his screen, smiling up at him.

“Umm. When I was little I really wanted to go to space camp. The little kid in me is way pumped for this trip, albeit a little sad that I’m only going to be awake for the last few months of it.”

She was sad to be missing so much of the trip through space. It was something that even as a child, she’d looked toward. He backed up the recording to the same time stamp, watching again and again as Felicity smilingly informed the camera of her child ambitions of space camp.

He knew now, thanks to his countless hours of studying and searching, that he could do it. He could wake her up. She could see more – far more – than just the four months of space travel that Queen Consolidated promised its passengers. 

But he could not guarantee that she would have the option of getting back to hibernation and making it to step foot on Planet 2040. And the mere idea of subjecting her to the misery and the pain and solitude he had experienced since awakening? That was enough to stop him from attempting to wake her. Even if it meant he had to carry on alone, he couldn’t subject her to that. 

It would be unspeakably cruel. Better to imagine her and what might have been rather than to make her real only to destroy her. 

On his twenty eighth replay of the clip, his tablet froze just as the lights flickered in the hibernation hall, going dark for a split second before resuming. He had no sooner looked up at the lights than they were on again, and the tablet with Felicity’s face resumed playing, drawing his attention once more.

“Space camp,” he murmured, rolling idea after idea around in his brain, trying to reason himself out of the unthinkable and simultaneously trying to justify it. When he was exhausted from arguing with himself, he decided once more to call it a night.

“Goodbye Felicity. Sleep well,” he muttered gently as he stood and left the hibernation hall, trying to distract himself from the moral quandary he now found himself at. No distraction had worked thus far but he continued to try and keep himself otherwise occupied, though his thoughts inevitably turned back to Felicity.

☆☆☆☆☆

He couldn’t do it. It was wrong. He’d be shipwrecking her along with him. And even if he could figure out how to wake her up, there was no guarantee she’d get along with him. Just because he’d been pining for her on this side of the glass didn’t mean they were friends. And just because he had watched her recorded ship entries and fallen for her didn’t mean she would find him endearing in the least. She’d worked for his father’s company. She’d probably heard plenty of stories of the kind of man Oliver Jonas Queen was.

Or rather, the man he _ had _been. No more. Going on five years of celibacy could really help a guy get his head on straight. 

She could hate him. And what kind of existence would that be, to be stuck on this ship with only one other person who you _ hated _? 

But would Felicity forgive him? _ Could _ she? Could _ he_, if someone woke him up and possibly doomed him to this life? 

_ No. _

How could anyone forgive that great a transgression? It would be supremely selfish of him to try and wake her up. Even if she was capable of getting them both back to hibernation - which he truly believed she was - it was too great a gamble. And while Oliver was more than happy to gamble with his own life, he couldn’t justify gambling with the life of an innocent, beautiful stranger for his own gain. 

Especially not a beautiful stranger he was falling in love with. 

He’d thrown himself wholly into a review of the rest of the passenger manifest, searching for anyone else who would definitely have the requisite skillset to break into the crew’s pod quarters or who would definitely be able to fix a hibernation pod malfunction. But of the five thousand passenger souls aboard the vessel, none of the tech savvy had anything in their profiles that gave him definitive proof they’d be able to help him. And without that definitive proof, he was back to square one. 

Or rather, square Felicity.

He wasn’t going to wake her. 

But what if.

No. Absolutely not. He couldn’t. And he wouldn’t. This was his hell to suffer through, his crucible - not hers. And he wouldn’t be the one to inflict it on anyone else, no matter what it might cost him. He’d rather spend a lifetime staring at her from this side of the glass than risk ruining her life.

☆☆☆☆☆

“You went to the barber, I see.” 

“I did indeed, Yao.” Oliver said smoothly as he took his usual seat at the bar, staring intently at the robotic barkeep. Instinctively, he passed a hand across his recently shaven chin, the hair there now reduced to a fine stubble instead of the ridiculously long and tangled mess he’d allowed his facial hair to become. “Coffee. Black.” He requested, and in short order he had a steaming mug in hand as he sat staring at the hibernation pod manual before him. At his feet was a toolkit from the storage area of the ship. He’d been carrying it around for weeks now, trying to convince himself that he should put it away and failing. 

“Can I get you anything else, Oliver?” 

“Now Yao, you know I haven’t been hitting the hard stuff.” 

“True; your order preferences have changed greatly since you first started coming here.” 

“Yeah well, I’ve been trying to behave more healthily than I behaved in recent years.” 

“Is that so?” 

“Yao, I’m hurt that you haven’t noticed.” Oliver chattered blithely. “I run now. Every day. And I can do the salmon ladder. I learned archery from the bots in the gym. And hand to hand combat. I learned Russian. It’s amazing what you can master when you’ve got avoidance issues and you’re pining for someone you can’t ever have.” 

“Well done.” 

“Gee thanks,” Oliver sighed, glancing around the bar dully, not that anything would have changed. 

Nothing ever changed. 

“Today makes five years that I have been awake on this ship.” Oliver remarked softly, prompting Yao to smile at him.

“Congratulations.” 

“Yeah right,” Oliver exhaled, slamming down his empty mug of coffee. 

“Yao, I have spent five years in this hell hole by myself. Five years.” 

“You are not alone. You have the other passengers. And myself.” 

“Great comfort, that.” Oliver shot back, his tone snarky as he looked once more to the toolbox at his feet. “Yao, how long until the Gambit reaches Planet 2040?” 

“The Gambit is projected to reach Planet 2040 in approximately eighty five years, one month, and twelve days.” 

“Right. Thanks.” Oliver plucked the pod manual off the countertop and scooted off of his seat, stooping to pick up his tool box. 

“Goodbye, Oliver.” 

“See ya, Yao.” Oliver retorted, striding urgently from the bar, his breathing hitching nervously as he went. Despite being in the best physical shape of his life, his breathing continued to deteriorate as he strode towards the Hibernation Hall, his self preservation instincts screaming at him to do an about face. But he was drunk on his own pain and isolation and for now, that sorrow emboldened him. If he didn’t act now, he might come out of this emotional tailspin and wise up. 

When he arrived at his empty hibernation pod, he practically threw himself down on the ground, ripping open his toolbox and flipping the manual open to the page he had studied for hour upon hour. In short order, he had the maintenance panel opened up on the pod. A little finagling, and he was able to open up the memory drive.

He didn’t understand what he was doing, honestly. But he had reached a point of no return. Oliver Queen wanted to see his family again. He’d gone five years without them. He had to _ try _ to put himself into a metabolically stable state so that he could see them. So what if he had already tried unsuccessfully for years on end to get himself back into hibernation? He’d try again. And he'd try metabolic stasis again. He’d try until it killed him or he was successful. And if he died in the attempt?

So be it. 

He kept fiddling with the pod until he reached what he thought was the terminal point in his meddling. Glancing at his tablet, still powered on and sitting inside the pod waiting for him, he took a deep breath. On the screen, her passenger profile stared back at him, watching in silent companionship. If he was going to risk death in this endeavor, he wanted the option of staring into her beautiful eyes one last time before it happened.

“Wish me luck, Felicity.” 

His thumb jammed down on a button and he waited expectantly. For several long seconds, there was only silence. And then, something seemed to happen - the mechanisms within began to turn and grind. And it was hardly proof positive that he’d done it - he’d managed to restart the pod in the past, he’d even recalibrated it and done any number of things, but never yielding his desired outcome. But still. Movement was something. And something was better than nothing.

Oliver threw himself headlong into his pod, waiting with a desperate hope for the pod to somehow function and place him in a metabolically stable state that would carry him eighty five years into the future. 

He was sweating now as the weight of what he was doing hit him full force. This was madness. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. But he had. There was no turning back now.

From within the pod, he fumbled with the tablet, plugging it in to a connection he’d discovered behind a panel of the interior. Tapping frantically to exit her profile, he tried to pull up the ship log but at that precise moment, the entire ship was plunged into darkness. For a few long, impossible seconds, Oliver feared he’d broken the entire ship with his attempts to get back to hibernation. There was no light, save for his tablet, shining her image out into the black vastness like a beacon of hope. Still, even her face wasn’t enough to calm him from his terror. 

Had he broken the ship? If he had, there were five thousand souls on board whose blood would be on his hands if something went wrong. His heart nearly burst out of his chest with the fear of it all. Then, with a flicker and a shudder, everything came back online, the far off buzz of electricity once more filling the cavernous silence. 

And then, distantly, he heard a sound that made him rise slowly out of his pod in disbelief.

The soft hiss of a hibernation pod decompressing echoed through the hall, followed by the soft noise of the glass panel sliding free. Scrambling, Oliver jumped clear of his pod and followed the sound, unable to process the sight that met his eyes.

_ Her _pod had opened. And as he watched, the automated systems carried out their normal functions; needles appeared and punctured her arms and legs, injecting her with the specialized drugs that would rouse her from her static state.

“NO! No no no _ no NO!_” His roars went unheeded and even as he watched, her chest expanded with her first, post-hibernation breath. 

Felicity was awake.

He was no longer the only conscious living thing on this ship.

She was awake.

_ She was awake_. 

What had he done?! And _ how _ had he done it? He hadn’t been trying to wake her! He’d been trying to put _ himself _ into a stable state, not wake someone else _out _of one! As he watched the welcome video began projecting itself before her to rouse her from her deep slumber. But the moment that her eyes opened, Oliver felt his heart stop.

She was awake. He wasn’t alone. 

And then, he _ fled_.

He sprinted away, hiding the evidence that he had meddled with his pod as he went. Then he flung himself back into his luxury suite where he allowed himself to fall apart in earnest. 

He tugged at his hair and cradled his head in his hands. He grabbed the glass tumblers off of the ornate, decorative platter in the suite hallway and threw them violently, then gloried in the sound they made as they shattered. God, what he would have given in that moment to be as fragile as that. Then maybe he would have broken before now, before this point of no return. If he were as breakable as glass, she would be sound asleep in hibernation, safe from his destructive touch, not waking up to the first day of a living nightmare. 

“What have I done?” He gasped as he crumpled to his knees amidst the shattered glass, ignoring the pain as his jeans and skin tore upon the jagged shards. He hadn’t meant to wake her. And yet, somehow, unintentionally, he still had.

“What have I done?” 

He repeated it once more before he sagged completely to the floor, heedless of the shattered glass around him as he fell apart.

Felicity Smoak was awake. And it was somehow, entirely his fault.


End file.
